It usually pops up on a blog in the form of an angry rant along the lines of, "Why doesn't Joe/Jane Sixpack WAKE UP and get outraged about The War / The Bush Administration / Global Warming / [insert latest outrage here]?". And I sympathize, I really do. I'm amazed at the capacity of people to rationalize and accept things that go against their own self-interest. But the fact of the matter is, they do. Ranting about it might let off some steam and help you feel better, but it's not going to change the facts on the ground.

The question then becomes, what do you do about it?

More after the jump...

John Dickinson: ... Be careful, sir. History will brand him [John Adams] and his followers as traitors!

    John Hancock: Traitors to what, Mr. Dickinson -- the British Crown, or the British half-crown? Fortunately there are not enough men of property in America to dictate policy.

    Dickinson: Perhaps not, but don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us ...

    Chorus of Conservatives:
    ... to the right
    ever to the right
    Never to the left
    Forever to the right.

I AM unhappy about this. I'm disgusted that Bush thinks it's OK to ignore our laws and treat the Constitution like just a piece of paper. If you don't like a law, call your buddies in Congress get the law changed. It's not like Bush was having difficulty getting Congress to do what he wanted three years ago when this all started. (Which is NOT to say that spying on innocent Americans is OK, I'm just pointing out what a leader who cares about rule of law should do.)

(more after the jump)

And of course, Comcast won't be here until later this afternoon. So I'm 'borrowing' a wifi connection but have no TV.

Does ANYONE have a link to realtime streaming video for one of the news networks so I can follow the indictments? The local radio stations just don't cut it for this kind of breaking news story.

New Orleans vs. Mumbai (Bombay)

Inches of rain in New Orleans due to hurricane Katrina... 18
Inches of rain in Mumbai (July 27th).... 37.1

Population of New Orleans... 484,674
Population of Mumbai....  12,622,500

Deaths in Mew Orleans within 48 hours of Katrina...100
Deaths in Mumbai within 48hours of rain..  37.

Number of people to be evacuated in New Orleans... entire city
Number of people evacuated in Mumbai...10,000

Cases of shooting and violence in New Orleans...Countless
Cases of shooting and violence in Mumbai.. NONE

Time taken for US army to reach New Orleans.. 48hours
Time taken for Indian army and navy to reach Mumbai...12hours

Status 48hours later...New Orleans is still waiting for relief,
army and electricity
Status 48hours later..Mumbai is back on its feet and is business
is as usual

USA...World's most developed nation
India...Third world country..
Oopss...did I get the last fact wrong???

Take a used cruise ship, fill it with programmers, and park it three miles off the US coast so that it is no longer subject to US laws and regulations (like OSHA rules, overtime pay, etc). Pay the programmers less than $22,000 a year and make then work 10 hours a day. And then say that since the ship is so close to America, that it's really a way of keeping American jobs at home.

It sounds to me more like indentured servitude than a decent job opportunity.

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing 'sexual services' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

More after the jump.....

Florida - 72% reported

Ohio

Pennsylvania

72% of precincts are in for FL, about 20% each for the other two. It seems pretty likely that FL is going for Bush and PA for Kerry. That leaves OH and I am very, very nervous about the prospects there.

On the face of it, it's a nice, reasonably non-threatening idea:

One of the movement's objectives is to give Christians an opportunity to "out" themselves on the job, to let them express who they are, freely and without feeling persecuted. Few would argue with such a goal: it suits an open society. And if it increases productivity and keeps C.E.O.'s from turning into reptiles, all the better.

It starts getting a little less pretty after the jump.....

A personal anecdote - a few years ago, the department I was working in went to have an offsite team-building exercise. This one involved climbing "rock walls" in a warehouse in the Mission District. What was interesting was that the instructor/facilitator who was working with our team thought the wrong person was the manager of our group. The actual manager was no leader, and she picked up on that immediately. It really brought home my understanding of the difference between leading and just being in charge.

Leadership is one of those things that to be really good at it, it has to be inborn. Which is not to say that someone who is not a natural leader cannot lead effectively, but s/he generally has to work long and hard at it, and also should have some other positive attributes to help compensate. (This is pretty rampant in the technology industry - developers with good ideas rarely are good natural leaders, but some can work at it and become effective.) Less so in politics, although Al Gore is a good example of someone who has a lot going for him but is not a natural leader.

I don't claim to be a stellar natural leader, but I do know how to lead. For me, it's a feeling almost like being on stage -- when you are actively in the process of leading, you need to be putting out that extra energy necessary to carry everyone along with you. Not to get too Biblical, but the phrase "Let your light so shine before men" is pretty apt. You don't need to always be right or always have the right answer, but you must have a clear picture in your head of where you are going and you must able to effectively communicate why you need to reach that goal.

You don't need to be a genius to be a leader, although a total moron would have difficulty grasping the issues well enough to lead. You need enough self-confidence to know when you have enough information to make a decision, so that you don't fall prey to information paralysis. You also need enough humility to realize (and admit) when you're not right or when someone else's idea is better than yours. For a really good leader this not even a conscious process, it's just a part of who they are.

All this is true whether you're leading a backyard book club or the United States of America.

Why?

My problem with the whole debate format is it has become yet another way for candidates to get out their spin more than anything else. Nothing that's said there can be taken as either fact or serious policy proposal.

Here's an example:

I have a very clear recollection of one of the 2000 Presidential debate - I happened to be driving up Nob Hill at the time and for some reason Candiate Bush's comment about how he was completely uninterested in "nation building" (the buzzword of the time; considered a criticism of the USA's involvment in Bosina) stuck in my brain. Look what 4 years have brought.

Yet I'm sure I'll watch them all anyway.

Swastikas were scrawled over as many as 50 campaign signs in a hate crime against an Israeli-American Richmond District businessman seeking election to the Board of Supervisors.

The target of the anti-Semitic vandalism spree was David Heller, president of the Geary Boulevard Merchant Association and first-time candidate for supervisor in District 1.

Upon arriving to work Monday morning, Heller was inundated with messages from business owners whose windows had been defaced with swastikas over the weekend. In each reported incident, the campaign sign, which features Heller's picture, was taped to the inside of the store window and the vandal used a black marker to superimpose a swastika and a Star of David symbol in front of Heller's face on the outside of the glass.

After almost exactly half my life as a member, today I sent in a Voter Registration Form without enrolling in the Republican Party.

I was actually sad to see how it has been destroyed over the last 10 years or so, culminating with the absurdity which is our current leader. :(

He lives in MA, which isn't exactly a swing state, but still, it's all good.

It would be funny except that the feds are doing the same thing right now with the FDA. And in at least one case they've won.

Maybe I'm naive - I admit I know nothing about how jails are run - but I have a very hard time understanding how 36 people can die in custody and it can all be attributed to "unauthorized actions taken by a few individuals, and in some cases coupled with the failure of a few leaders to provide adequate supervision and leadership."

Other points that seem to indicate that this report is a bunch of hogwash -  Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek, the Army's inspector general, seems to have decided to ignore some critical areas, such as the so-called 'ghost prisons'.

Mikolashek said he found "no evidence" of so-called ghost detainees, prisoners kept off the books by U.S. forces and hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

But he said he was not disputing either Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba's report on Abu Ghraib that exposed and criticized the practice, or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said he ordered the secret detention of an Iraqi prisoner held for more than seven months without notifying the ICRC.

"We did not go back and do a post mortem on that particular issue," Mikolashek said.

As I said, none of this is unexpected. And given the proximity of the 9/11 commission's report, this one is going to be buried.

tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air.

Michael Moore has weighed in on the issue here - offering a personal appearance and a free screening of Fahrenheit 9/11 as a way for the Alladdin casino to make it up to the American public. Think what you want of Moore, but he is an excellent publicist.

I'm kind of annoyed by the whole thing and decided to make a gesture. I went over to iTunes and bought a copy of the song 'Desperado' that was at the core of the whole mess. I know it's a somewhat meaningless gesture, but it was fun picking which version of the song to buy - there's at least a dozen of them aside from the Eagle's original version and Ronstadt's cover of it.

Howard Dean to Speak at Democratic Convention

Democratic National Convention officials are expected to announce today that former Gov. Howard Dean has been asked to speak on the first night of the convention, sources said Monday night.

Dean and several other former presidential candidates are scheduled to speak on July 26, the opening night of the convention at the FleetCenter in Boston. It has already been announced that former Presidents Carter and Clinton will be speaking that evening.

Dean's spokeswoman Laura Gross said they are deferring to convention officials for any announcement.